There are Christians in Gaza?

Analysis: Cruelty and silence in Gaza | Middle East | Jerusalem Post

I must admit I didn't know there were any there at all (or any who are open about it). Turns out there's around 2,000 to 3,000, and they are not feeling especially wanted, to put it mildly.

Fodder for both sides?

Earth has warmed 0.4 C in 30 years

Go to the article to see a map just released showing where warming has occurred in the last 30 years. The article says:

Half of the globe has warmed at least one half of one degree Fahrenheit (0.3 C) in the past 30 years, while half of that -- a full quarter of the globe -- warmed at least one full degree Fahrenheit (0.6 C), according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Globally, Earth's atmosphere warmed an average of about 0.4 C (or about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) in 30 years, according to data collected by sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount.

However, the warming is very uneven, being much stronger in the far north, while much of Antarctica cooled.

The part that warming skeptics will take and run with is this:

This is a pattern of warming not forecast by any of the major global climate models.

Still, it does sound like pretty clear evidence of substantial warming. Expect much comment about the map in the global warming blogosphere soon.

(Interestingly, Jennifer Marohasy in her skeptic blog recently posted that satellite temperature data was "inconvenient but accurate". What's she going to say about this, then? Somehow, I don't she and her band of followers are going to be convinced.)

Why new energy develops slowly?

Are Chemists, Engineers on Green Jobs List? - Dot Earth Blog -

The Dot Earth blog has a lengthy post talking about the relatively modest amount of money spent on R&D in the US on energy. I'm sure they won't mind if I reproduce the graph here:

Interesting, hey? The big band of yellow in the 1960's was for the Apollo program.

Gives some plausibility to those who say we need the equivalent of an Apollo program to get energy innovation really going. It's also amazing to note how much health consumes.

More ETS criticism

Money and Lobbyists Hurt European Efforts to Curb Gases - Series - NYTimes.com

Anyone else noticed how much criticism of the European effort at an emissions trading scheme there is at the moment?

Now the New York Times joins in.

The Chinese, food and cruelty

SBS is currently showing a 4 part documentary on Wednesday evenings called "The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World". Last night was episode 2.

I missed part of the first episode, so I'm not sure where in China it is, but the place is truly gigantic. (It can seat 5,000 customers.)

The show is by turns fascinating and (when it comes to treatment of animals) pretty horrifying to Western eyes.

First, the fascinating part. The show seems to give a pretty good insight into the psychology of many Chinese, and if last night's episode was anything to go by, it paints a pretty bleak picture of a materialistic society very obsessed with money. Sure, much of the population was grindingly poor until very recently, so a concern with money is understandable from that point of view. But still, it's not a good a look.

It also indicates that it will be a very unhappy society if lots of people stop making money in the economic downturn. My scepticism as to the successful future of China remains.

The animal cruelty issue was on display in both episodes. Last week, it was the dish where the live fish has its body cooked in boiling oil with its head held out, so it can be served on the plate with its mouth moving. OK, so it's cold blooded; it looks gross to me, but I won't get too worked up about seafood eaten while half alive.

But last night there was a brief scene of a chicken being scolded in boiling water while still alive. The dish was served with the head on, but still I can't see why the scalding and feather removal has to start while it is alive.

I do not understand why the Chinese seem immune to Western ideas of animal cruelty. In Congo Journey, a book I am currently reading, an America watching the way some pygmies kill an antelope makes the observation that it is only with the farming of animals, which involves caring for their welfare, that people start to worry about animal cruelty.

Nice theory, but it doesn't seem to have worked with the Chinese!

Harry Clarke had a post about this topic earlier this year, but none of the comments really enlightened as to why the Chinese don't seem to feel for animals in quite the same way much of the West does.

Still, a lot goes on in Western farming without being noticed. Chickens have a pretty miserable life here too, but at least a quick death.

Same with pigs. The cages they use to stop pregnant sows moving for months at a time while pregnant are (I reckon) just indefensible from a cruelty point of view, and it's only lack of knowledge in the community that hasn't led to the practice being rejected earlier. (The sow can stand, and sort of lie down, but not turn around. It is stuck in that position for up to 4 months. Can you imagine the uproar if dogs were allowed to be confined in that way?)

I see that a website (presumably industry funded) that defends the practice is careful to avoid any photos. A stop to the practice was one of the propositions successfully passed in California recently.

So it's not as if the West is completely cruelty free. Still, it seems hard to imagine the Chinese even getting interested in such issues, and I don't know why.

New technology and evil

Mumbai Terrorists Relied on New Technology for Attacks - NYTimes.com

Satellite phone, GPS, Google maps and VOIP appear to all be believed to have been used by the Mumbai terrorists.

The article also notes that the terrorists were in contact with Pakistan during the siege, and could get updates as to where the Indian military from their bosses who were watching TV coverage.

I must admit, I thought it was foolish of the Australia guy holed up in the hotel to keep ringing and talking to Australian media for this very reason. (Not that his calls would have made Pakistani TV, I guess, but you never know who's watching Australian TV too.)

Sabotage from the future

Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

See the link for an on-the-spot report on the repairs to the Large Hadron Collider, which blew up (well, a section of it at least) not long after it was turned on.

Current expectations are that it may start operating again in mid 2009, although I have read elsewhere it won't be turned up to 11 (so to speak) until 2010.

This is good news for those who worry about micro black holes or other things it may create. (And yeah, I am still curious to know if Plaga is wrong in his latest assertion, and whether absolutely all possible events have been considered. I have said before, the cosmic ray/neutron star argument may suggest there is no danger for stars; planets might be a different matter.)

Anyhow, the post at Cosmic Variance points out that it is still not clear what caused the initial fault which was "...a resistive zone developed in the electrical bus in the region between dipole C24 and quadrupole Q24." As the thing was vaporised, it's not that easy to find the cause of the "resistive zone" problem.

This is good, because it still allows for my pet science fiction-y theory as to what happened. The LHC has been suggested as possibly creating the right conditions for time travel, as well as mini black holes. If it is actually dangerous to the planet, then time travellers from the future (or another branch of the future?) may well have been taking a big interest in it from the start, and are actively sabotaging it. It may not require actual visitors from the future; maybe just sufficient ability to hack information into the computers. Maybe the time travel is allowed by the LHC itself at low power; maybe there is a different mechanism. (I know that it is an example of the grandfather paradox to argue that the LHC works as a time machine that then allows to future to prevent it from being turned on.)

I expect someone else has probably already thought of this, but if not I claim "dibs" on it!

If only X files was still being made...

Keeping it quiet

The gospel truth? | Jerusalem Post

Interesting article here that talks about the academic work on the origins of the Koran, which (as with similar work on the Bible starting more than a century ago) challenges the fundamentalist belief that the books are literally the word of God.

The writer points out that these academics like to keep a low profile, but if we really want Islamic fundamentalism to change, then it should be the subject of popular discussion.

Second post of the week with difficult to find tasteful title

Britain's Tongue, Kidney and Brains Boom - TIME

From the above article:

Lancashire, an industrial area in northwest England, is famous for its offal dishes, including liver, kidney, tripe (the lining of a cow's stomach), cow's heel, sheep's trotters and elder (cow's udder). There were more than 260 tripe shops in regional capital Manchester a century ago, many of which sold faggots, a traditional English dish made from a mixture of pork liver, fatty pork and herbs wrapped in an intestinal membrane.

I trust they have been re-branded by now.

Room for mischief here

First Muslim-friendly virtual world goes online

A trial version of the world's first Muslim-friendly virtual world was launched Tuesday, where users can create an online persona, design their own rooms, buy virtual items and interact with others.

Called Muxlim Pal and created by the Finnish-based company Muxlim.com, the English-language site caters primarily to Muslims living in western countries who long to reconnect with other Muslims and Muslim culture. ...

On Muxlim Pal, which is free of charge to join, users can shop for clothes for their avatar at the mall, hang out at the beach cafe, pray at the mosque or go to concerts.

What makes Muxlim Pal different from other popular websites such as Second Life is that content portraying violence, drugs, sexual references or profanity is not allowed.

I wonder if it is OK for avatar women to show their face there?

Offset disarray

UN suspends leading carbon-offset firm : Nature News

As international climate talks began last week in Poland, the United Nations (UN) suspended the work of the main company that validates carbon-offset projects in developing countries, sending shockwaves through the emissions-trading business....

At its meeting on 28 November in Poznań, the CDM's executive board temporarily withdrew Det Norske Veritas's accreditation after a spot check carried out in early November at the firm's headquarters revealed serious flaws in project management.

The board did not specify which projects are affected, but cites problems with the company's internal auditing processes, and says that one of its staff members was verifying CDM projects without proper qualifications. As a result, "validation activities could not be demonstrated to be based on appropriate sectoral expertise", the board reports.

Det Norske Veritas is a risk-assessment and consulting company with about 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Its 2007 revenue was 8 billion Norwegian krone (US$1.1 billion)

More Kyoto criticism

Kyoto is worthless (and you don't have to be a sceptic to believe that now) - Dominic Lawson, - The Independent

Lawson makes some good sounding points about the EU faith in Kyoto, and none of them are encouraging. Here's a key section:

This fabricated market in carbon has at its heart the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. This is how the EU, which had an obligation under Kyoto to reduce its emissions by two per cent by 2012, has managed to claim success while actually increasing its emissions by 13 per cent. By purchasing so called "offsets" from countries such as China, Britain, for example, proclaims itself a "leader in the fight against climate change".

Most of this is entirely fraudulent, in the sense that the Chinese have been paid billions to destroy particular atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which have actually been manufactured in order to be destroyed – and for no other purpose. This is hardly surprising: if something is accorded a price (especially a fixed one) then companies will queue up to produce it.

The EU is inordinately proud of its Emissions Trading Scheme – which it calls "the world's first carbon market" – and it is this scheme which has created the creative accounting scam known as "offsets". Even mortgage-backed securities, the financial instrument at the heart of the credit crunch, at least had something useful – houses – at the bottom of the pile of junk. Some people have described offsets as the carbon market equivalent of the mediaeval sale of Indulgences by the Catholic Church; but as Prof Prins points out, the Church sold them only as a means of atoning for the sins of the past – "carbon offsets" are sold to absolve us from sins in the future, an even more preposterous transaction.

I wonder why it never went into production

CAR WITH PROP

Science, ghosts and ESP

Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased: Scientific American

This is an interesting article (and series of comments following) about the quite commonly reported phenomena of people having an experience of the presence of their deceased partner (or even beloved, dead animal.)

According to the post, over 80% of elderly people experience "hallucinations" associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement "as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved's passing." These can be visual, auditory or other experiences.

I did not know that they were so common, but it is a topic of personal interest because my mother reported her own (not very dramatic) experience of this. She told me and her other children, quite some weeks after my father's death, that she had unexpectedly heard his breathing beside her in bed at night. She said it was distinct and clear, and actually a comforting experience. As is typical for these experiences, they did not recur all that often, but felt very "real", and stopped in time.

Many of the people commenting on the above article question (some based on their own experiences) how science can know that these are really hallucinations.

Perhaps the best evidence on the paranormal side is that of crisis apparitions: the well known stories where a person sees someone (usually, but not always, someone close to them) who appears unexpectedly and disappears, with the later discovery that at the time of the experience the person viewed had just died.

These type of apparition greatly interested the early scientists who set up the Society for Physical Research in England in the 19th century, and from the start the question was whether they represented proof of an afterlife, or "only" suggested ESP.

To the mind of nearly all present day scientists, ESP is just as ridiculous idea as belief in the afterlife, so it is still a topic of considerable interest, even if it is one that by its nature is never likely to be open to much in the way of definitive study.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if strong evidence of a repeatable form of ESP was produced. It should, by rights, shake up the scientific establishment to its core; but at the same time, you can imagine the majority of the public shrugging their shoulders and just taking it as confirmation of long held hunches and beliefs based on anecdote and personal experience.

Still, it would be remarkable if it ever occurs.

More advocacy for carbon tax (as opposed to ETS)

Yes you can change the climate, Mr Obama - science-in-society - 06 December 2008 - New Scientist

A post incapable of witty yet tasteful title

NHS funds 'used to import horse sperm' - The Independent

Police are investigating allegations that horse sperm was imported into Britain disguised as human semen for IVF treatment. They are looking at claims that a senior manager in the UK's largest NHS trust diverted NHS funds to buy the horse sperm that was then used to breed mares.

And how was this detected? Pretty easily, since I bet it doesn't take hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy overseas human semen, regardless of the IQ of the donors:

NHS trust sources said police were alerted after internal audits revealed an unusual series of large purchases of human semen from overseas suppliers. Invoices said to be worth several hundred thousand pounds had allegedly been created to account for the transactions.

I can imagine women who have undergone recent IVF in England feeling just a little queasy at reading the news, but apparently they have nothing to worry about:

They stressed there has been no suggestion of any horse sperm being improperly or inadvertently used in the trust's IVF treatments. Imperial College Healthcare has some of the UK's leading IVF treatment facilities.

And, maybe, some of the best criminals too.

UPDATE: a quick cartoon of questionable quality by your blogger (you'll have to click to enlarge):

Today's odd Japanese story

Pink thrills: Japanese sex movies go global | The Japan Times Online

It's not X rated stuff that is being talked about here. Apparently, Japan is one of the few places in the world where soft core porn made on 35 mm film still has a market.

The article is worth reading to see the titles of some of the "pink" features. My favourite would have to be "A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn".

"Australia" death watch

So, Australia took $7 million in its second weekend in the US, for a total take of $30 million. (It looks like in Australia it might have taken around $8 million?) Still, hard to see it recouping its budget of $130 million, even though it essentially hasn't opened in other markets. (I suspect that there might be some bad but enjoyable reviews yet to come from England.)

Surprisingly, Frank Devine liked it, but is his article's title a pun based on something about Luhrmann that is common knowledge? Actually, Devine seems to like it because it at least looks like a movie, unlike most Australian films. (I think I have posted somewhere here before - although I can't quickly find where - that Australian films often look "empty", in that they just don't have many people on the screen, even in street scenes. Someone wrote at Unleashed recently that most Aussie films look more like television, which I think is pretty much another way of saying the same thing.)

Tim Train has yet to provide a review. Hurry up Tim.

Meanwhile, Martin Ferguson of the strangely untouchable Rudd government is looking increasingly like he blew $40 million on a movie related campaign that is going to get "less bang for our dollar". Talk about understatement. (Actually, was this campaign decided on only after the last Federal election? I would have guessed it would have been a deal worked out earlier than that.)

The optimistic Obama

President elect Obama has apparently given an interview in which he talks of encouraging an optimistic view of the future by having science talked about in lectures at the White House:

The president-elect said his administration is interested in “elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about.”

“Thinking about the diversity of our culture and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that once again we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America,” he said.

“Historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that sense that better days are ahead,”

Sounds very much like emulating the JFK period, and in principle I'm all for encouraging optimism too. But there are a few key differences between the early 1960's and now.

The main one is that, apart from the fact that the world had just invented the means to destroy itself, and scientists had enabled that, I suspect that in early 60's it was still the scientists as a class who were genuinely optimistic about the future. The possibilities of technology still seemed endless, and environmental catastrophe (apart from the nuclear type) was not a popular concern.

Move ahead only a decade, and scientists became the source of much of the pessimism in the modern world. It's a position I think you can argue they still hold.

Even worse, even if many of the scientists of 60's privately thought that religion was something humanity would soon grow out of, it was not a position they frequently espoused. Of course now they are often active players in a culture war with religion. And it's not just a theoretical matter, as the fight over stem cell research has shown. (Yes, the Islamic inspired aggression is partly to blame for this, but I think issues like stem cell use would have made atheist scientists more aggressive anyway.)

Furthermore, I find it somewhat ironic that Obama should be mentioning talk of "travelling to the stars" when, despite the Apollo project being kicked by Kennedy, it's been Democrats ever since who have cut back on NASA spending. (And it's certainly those on the left who always go on about "what good has the space program ever done for us?")

Getting a sense of optimism from lecturing scientists, and a sense of respect for the religion Obama says he subscribes to, is going to take some very careful selection of visiting lecturers at the White House.

He may also well find that a scientist may be "optimistic" on an issue (such as greenhouse gas emission) in the sense that he or she thinks a problem can be overcome, but only at such a huge cost that Obama will find he just cannot follow the advice politically.

The hypno-chooks of Los Angeles

Can keeping backyard chickens really be as entrancing as this Los Anglese Times article reports? (I'm vaguely interested in getting some myself, but being terrorised in the backyard by a rooster when I was a toddler means I'm probably biased when it comes to chicken admiration.)

Here are some extracts:

"I used to think it would be so great to bring the laptop outside and just watch the chickens and work," Knutzen said. "But I can't get anything done when I'm out here because I can't take my eyes off the chickens. They are hypnotic."....

"Bottom line, chickens are a lot of fun," said Dave Belanger, publisher of Backyard Poultry magazine, who has seen subscriptions more than triple since he launched in 2006....

Diehl has been keeping an elaborate blog on her chickens' development and socialization at greenfrieda.blogspot.com.

"I'm kind of obsessed with them," she said. "Chicken people always talk about how chickens are better than TV. You could watch them all day and never get tired of it."

UPDATE: this morning while in bed, at about 6 am, I thought I could hear the sound of a chook coming from some neighbour's yard. Mind you, as it is crows, lorikeets and assorted other birds that often wake us up at 4.45 am at this time of year, I can't complain too much about this suspected chicken's timing.